In the latest installment of our HIMSS12 blog series, John Tempesco of ICA is interviewed. John serves as chief marketing officer, is an ACHE and Life Management Institute Fellow, and has 34 years of healthcare experience. To view earlier installments please click here.

Dodge: What do you expect will be the theme of conversations at this year’s HIMSS show?

Tempesco: I think there will be three key threads that will run through the conference. One will be about ACOs, their value proposition, and how they will affect all kinds of technology, especially interoperability. This thread will give a good value-based reason for exchanging information, creating interoperability solutions and lead toward the next thread, which is value reimbursement.

Secondly, in addition to ACOs, there is a real focus on value-based reimbursement. Everyone wants to get out of piecework healthcare and start reimbursing healthcare based on results.

The last topic, since we are in an election year, will be about the politics of healthcare. There will be discussions about who will win the election, and what will happen to healthcare especially as it relates to healthcare IT. And, will there be a continued push for interoperability solutions, health information exchange, with the future of direct – all of those things that the current administration is pushing.

Dodge: How is ICA approaching its overall strategy for HIMSS?

Tempesco: Our strategy this year is to engage other vendors to be more collaborative in their approach to solving healthcare issues. None of us can do what is necessary to really change healthcare in isolation, so we want to engage as many vendors as possible to share data with each other in a way that will result in improved quality, reduced cost and satisfying patients, providers and payers. We believe that this approach will form that basis for the overall health IT industry to work toward a single goal of creating an infrastructure that will enable healthcare entities to form ACOs, gather necessary information and report back to payers, patients and employers as to whether or not they are getting value for the dollars they are spending.

Dodge: What are you looking forward to most this year at HIMSS and what are you hoping to gain from attending the conference?

Tempesco: We have two key areas we are looking forward to this year. The first is launching our new stepped approach to establishing rapid value-based interoperability across the healthcare continuum.  This approach defines and segments the steps necessary to achieve an ACO, a value-based reimbursement model or a private or public HIE. What we’ve seen in the past is that people are buying a solution they think will get them to HIE nirvana, when they aren’t conceptually ready for the many steps necessary to get them there, and they don’t see the actual success they’ve achieved along the way. What we’ve done is break our application into five solutions, some separate and some interconnected, all of which enable rapid deployment and results. They include a standards based interoperability solution; a communication capability; collaborative care enhancements that allow building on the first two and create advanced care coordination capabilities; data analysis and reporting; and a full ACO capability. We’re looking forward to rolling out this new CareAlign methodology, and showing the industry how to progress through those steps when creating an HIE or ACO.

The second big item, going back to our collaborative approach with other vendors, is launching our ICA Extreme Testing Center, or ICAetc. It is a free virtual playground where vendors can test their interoperability capabilities anytime. It is free, vendor-agnostic and allows end–to-end transactions between vendors without restrictions on scenarios or data elements. Vendors can see whether or not what they’re developing is going to meet the requirements of others in the marketplace.

Dodge: What can we expect to see in the HIE space in 2012?

Tempesco: Over the past year, it has become very difficult to define what exactly an HIE is. Last year HIE was a big theme of HIMSS and was a major part of most vendor booths. I believe we have now reached a tipping point in the industry. There are currently enough HIEs deployed that we’re beginning to see the same issues with sharing information among HIEs as we saw with vendors. There will be two major issues in the HIE space this year. The first is how to get the standards to work with each other so HIE and HIT vendors can share information in a collaborative way. The second is the question of where do we go from here.  Once there is information being shared, how can it be used to make a difference within healthcare by reducing costs and improving quality and satisfaction?

Dodge: Where can we find ICA at HIMSS12?

Tempesco: We’ll be at booth #4831 and our client Janet King, executive director/eHealth director of Middle Tennessee eHealth Connect/THA will be presenting a lecture on strategies for building a sustainable HIE through expansion and continuum-wide provider inclusion.

In the coming weeks, Dodge will be sharing a series of guest blog posts leading up to the HIMSS12 conference that will be taking place February 20-24, 2012 at the Venetian Sands Expo Center in Las Vegas, Nevada. The blog series will allow a sampling of our clients to share their expectations for the show and comment on what 2012 holds for healthcare IT.

Dodge will be attending HIMSS12 and conducting interviews throughout the conference. We’re looking forward to sharing our experience with you.

Our first interview is with Kristen Heffernan who oversees the marketing of Henry Schein MicroMD Practice Management and EMR software. Heffernan joined the company three years ago.

Dodge: What do you think will be the theme of conversations at this year’s HIMSS conference?

Heffernan: I think the themes at this year’s conference will center on the hot topics in the industry – the things that still aren’t fully vetted out either by CMS and other healthcare regulatory organizations. We are still learning about healthcare information exchange and ACOs, specifically how they can best operate. One of the hottest topics I think will be about ACOs and interoperability between all of its parts, specifically health IT. As healthcare organizations take the first step of adoption towards EMR, healthcare analytics will be another big topic among attendees as they recognize the value of how to work with the wealth of accessible data that’s now being collected. And obviously, ICD-10 will also be a popular subject as we just made the leap into 5010, and now we’re focusing on how the industry will go about implementing ICD-10 and how it will impact the payers, the physicians, the clearinghouses and the hospitals.

Dodge: How is Henry Schein MicroMD approaching its overall strategy at HIMSS?

Heffernan: There are a wealth of opportunities for us at HIMSS: networking, continuing educational opportunities from the extensive programs, competitive research and more. Members representing all areas of our operations will be attending, each with their own goals and strategy for attending HIMSS this year.

Dodge: What are you looking forward to most this year at HIMSS and what are you hoping to gain from attending?

Heffernan: HIMSS provides us with the opportunity to meet with a lot of our existing clients and talk about ideas, as well as speak with new strategic partner vendors that can enhance how providers utilize our software. We also look for new software development ideas, along with anything that helps us improve our client relations and EMR implementation. We know that EMR implementation is a pain point, especially with providers new to using EMR, and our goal is to improve the user experience.

Dodge: How will current government regulations and the delay for stage 2 of meaningful use factor into the conference this year?

Heffernan: I think there will be a big sigh of relief at HIMSS for the delay of stage 2 meaningful use. Both providers and vendors have more time to adjust and have been given a little more leeway. There will be a lot of talk associated with payments; who is registered for the CMS incentive programs, who is receiving payments, and who is holding off and why.

Dodge: Where can people find Henry Schein MicroMD at HIMSS?

Heffernan: We’ll be at booth 13423.

Mark Hagland is a nationally recognized health care journalist, public speaker, and author. More information about him and about his work can be found at www.markhagland.org. In the following entry, he shares a few thoughts about the health care reform that is already happening in America.

With all the heat surrounding the national health care reform debate this summer, it would be easy to lose sight of the reality that what is primarily being talked about in Washington right now is health insurance reform (though with some elements of reimbursement reform mixed in).

And while people of good will might disagree on the best approach to address the enormous health insurance problems in our country, some level of consensus is beginning to emerge on what is sometimes referred to as “internal” health system reform—and that’s a good thing.

By “internal” reform, I mean the kinds of operational and incentive-related activities that take place within and around patient care in hospitals, clinics, and integrated health systems. I mean the innovative work being pursued by pioneer organizations across the country with regard to improving patient safety, patient care quality, clinician workflow, operational efficiency, and cost-effectiveness in care delivery.

I’ve described many examples of such work in my writing for health care professional publications, as well as in the two books I’ve written, Paradox and Imperatives in Health Care (which I co-authored with noted health care economist and futurist Jeffrey C. Bauer, Ph.D.), and Transformative Quality: The Emerging Revolution in Health Care Performance. In addition to shorter descriptions of various types of pioneering work in “internal health care reform” mentioned in those two books, I also provided fully 23 case studies of such work between the two volumes, focusing on organizations like Brigham & Women’s Hospital in Boston, Virginia Mason Medical Center in Seattle, Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago, and Geisinger Health System in central Pennsylvania, all organizations that are doing what needs to be done to improve the quality of patient care and make health care more transparent, accountable, and ultimately affordable, for everyone.

My case studies in both books range from the very broad to the more specific. On the very broad side was my case study on the 44-hospital Trinity Health system, based in Novi, Michigan, whose clinician and IT leaders are engaged in a truly massive effort to improve care quality and efficiency, with intensive health care IT support.

Among other things, the Trinity Health folks have been developing evidence-based order sets that they are standardizing across the entire health system, while also developing standardized clinical process workflows across the health system. Just these two elements alone are remarkable (there are many other aspects of the Trinity Health innovation work), and speak to the vast potential across the U.S. health care system for significant internal reform of the health care delivery nationwide.

Meanwhile, at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, a 20-hospital health system in Pittsburgh, PA, intrepid physicians have been creating innovations that demonstrate perfectly the kinds of synergies that can result when clinicians, IT professionals, and IT vendors work together to improve the environment around medication ordering, medication management, and overall access to relevant patient information at the point of care. Working with the Pittsburgh, PA-based dbMotion software company, Dr. Bill Fera and his colleagues at UPMC have innovated a kind of semantic interoperability that, since early 2008, has made it possible for physicians at some UPMC hospitals to pull up all of a patient’s medications and other clinical information (also including lab and radiology results) on a single screen, vastly improving physicians’ ability to make the best ordering and diagnostic decisions at the point of care.

Both of these case studies, along with nine others, are described more fully in Transformative Quality (available via my publisher’s website at www.productivitypress.com). What is strongly heartening for me is that organizations like Trinity Health and UPMC are showing the way forward, even as policymakers debate health insurance coverage and other very important health care policy issues in the coming weeks and months.

And, regardless of the final outcome of the comprehensive health care reform debate taking place in Washington right now, a consensus is emerging among all stakeholders that the “internal” reform that organizations like UPMC and Trinity Health are helping to lead is equally vital and important. I, for one, am looking forward to being able to write many, many more articles and book chapters about such innovations going forward. This is the kind of difficult, yet rewarding, work that health care providers face going into the future. In short, when it comes to “internal health care reform,” the future is now.

In case you have yet to see Ross Martin’s brilliantly creative YouTube video explaining “everything you need to know about the Health Information Technology for Clinical and Economic Recovery (HITECH) Act in under four minutes” it’s a definitive must-see. Should you not learn anything new, it’s at least entertaining! Check out HITECH: An Interoperetta in Three Acts. You can also read a little background information on Ross Martin and the ‘making of the video’ in a recent Modern Healthcare article.

Dr. Joel Diamond, CMO for Dodge client dbMotion, provides some interesting insight into the world of interoperability on his blog. Utilizing dbMotion technology, the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) recently completed the initial phase of its extensive interoperability initiative. As a practicing physician within the UPMC network, Dr. Diamond provides an interesting perspective on this hot topic.